Harnessing Sun Power: Saturn’s Blessing-in-Disguise

Guest Blog Feature: Mehal Rockefeller

Guest blog by Mehal Rockefeller shines light on Vedic solar New Year

Every so often my friend Dr Mehal Rockefeller guest blogs for me. His popular blog of April last year has resulted in many requests for him to make a return visit. He is literate on various topics, but his astrological insights into Vedic tradition are invaluable for us in the West, where we seem to have lost touch with the original purpose and connection seen in the heavens linking to our lives on earth. This latest blog post comes at a particularly fortunate time as the Indian subcontinent prepares for the onset of the great New Year solar festival on April 14. The Hindu (solar) New Year this year will count 1933.

Vedic lunar New Year occurred this year on April 4th, immediately after the Aries new moon. This ancient tradition is by far the more venerable of the two, counting Year 2068 in Hindu Lunar years. By contrast, and often causing confusion among lay westerners, Sikhs celebrated their New Year (543) on March 14th.

According to Vedic traditiion, at the time of onset of Lunar New Year, all the forces of Creation come into play in three phases. The three faces of Mother Divine (MD), MahaDurga or Mother Earth are Durga, Mahalaksmi and Saraswati.

The first three days of MD are known as the MahaDurga forces/energies, which destroy all impurities, evils, sins and ignorance within humankind.

Mahasaraswati: third phase of purification and growth through knowledge

After purification by the Durga forces, in the next three days, MahaLaksmi‘s forces and energies become lively. These natural laws bestow all wealth and comfort on humanity, to sustain us.

The final three days, Maha Saraswati, become dominant in the runup to solar New Year, when the natural laws of Wisdom and Knowledge come into play. It is believed that only through knowledge can we create a better life for ourselves and others.

It is therefore with much pleasure that I welcome Mehal once more at this auspicious time of year, to hear his ancient Vedic wisdom as it relates to current times. Ed.

SUN TRANSIT INTO ARIES, April 14th 2011: Time to harness the power of the Sun
Guest Blog © Mehal D Rockefeller, MD

Vedic New Year: powerful celebration of the Sun maintained throughout India

According to the Vedas, the New Year starts when the Sun transits into Aries, the first natural house of the Asian Zodiac. The Sun acquires maximum power when he enters Aries–a sign that is fiery, assertive, independent, courageous and enthusiastic in nature. The Sun is exalted in this sign and presents itself as a wonderful window of opportunity to harness its power for our all-round well-being.

On March 15th, a month ago, the Sun moved into Pisces–the last house on its round through the zodiac. That last Sun transit of the old Vedic Year marked a time to ‘take the best and leave the rest’ or to start shedding off what is no longer seving us or of use. I have written further on that here.

In Vedic tradition, the Sun becomes exalted and returns to its full power when it transits into Aries. This movement makes it the most auspicious month of the year to work on strengthening your connection to Sun. The radiance of Sun opens a way for new positive possibilities to happen and make strong any endeavors in whichever area of life you choose to focus. To add to this positivity, there are two further planets presently adding support and creating additional benefits to the Sun’s Transit.

Vedic Solar New Year (1933)

Vedic (lunar) New Year 2068; (solar) New Year 1933

Sun worship is not entirely understood in Western culture which has alienated itself from its pre-Christian roots. It has become extinct in most cultures–except for Japan and India in the East, and the Maya and indigenous Americans in the West. The understanding of the Sun God in India is profound.

Religious and spiritual leaders strongly encourage local performance of fire rituals for the Sun God on April 14/15th. There is the added power of April 14th being a Thursday, the day of the week dedicated to Jupiter.

Absolute Blessing from Jupiter for this Sun Transit
In 2011 the Vedic New Year starts off on a Thursday. This is traditionally ruled by Jupiter. Ancient Texts testify that this is an especially auspicious day–signifying a very good omen–to start a year. Also from May 8th to May 15th, Jupiter will become an associate to the Sun as it moves into Aries and shares the house for the last week.

Blessing in Disguise from Saturn for this Sun Transit

Last week's 'progressed' chart, according to Western astrological signs--for comparison

Saturn is presently in Virgo. On April 14th, Saturn moves into Libra where He will stand for approximately 2.5 years. When He sits there, He looks directly across to the Sun in Aries. Another way of looking at this: Saturn aspects the Sun (opposing), at every Vedic New Year in the next time period–2012 through 2013.

When this happens, an exalted Saturn in Libra, combined with an exalted Sun in Aries, will make the time turbulent and unsure. It will bring in negativity and hardship.

Therefore, this Vedic New Year of 2011, in narrowly escaping Saturn’s gaze, gives us all a blessing-in-disguise and provides us a perfect opportunity to strengthen our life with authority, material prosperity and good health.

Worship of Sun
You can gain the blessings of Sun for a positive outlook for the coming year that will be full of cheer and good fortune. By participating in powerful Sun rituals at this transit into Aries (Vedic and other cultures), your character, reputation and your health will be greatly energized.

Worshipping the Sun God blesses your life with strength, glory and success. The radiation of Sun empowers you with leadership, brilliance and executive power for a meritorious life!

Gain Power for Vedic New Year through the Sun Transit

Every Vedic New Year brings a new perspective and resolutions into your life. It’s also a great time to rejuvenate yourself with great strength and vigor. Sun’s transit into Aries can bless you to:

–sustain the dynamism and energy needed to support yourself in your professional and personal life through the year
–gain the Vital energy to go through your financial and personal matters with ease
–strengthen your career front and shun its exploitations
–develop managing abilities and elevate your professional and family standards
–maintain a perfect rapport with colleagues and relations
–radiate with self esteem, power, authority, magnetism and vitality.

Remember: worshipping the Sun blesses your life with strength, glory and success.
©2011 Mehal Rockefeller

2011 Year of the Leap: all the ONES: 01:01:11

Ice follies 2010-2011

We just passed solstice: solar ‘standstill’, the point when the Sun appears to come to rest at the center of the galactic plane. It seems to stand on celestial equator, pausing in time, moving neither north nor south.

Two more winter solstices to go and we shall again coincide with Galactic Center on December 21, 2012, when the Great Cycle calendar of the Maya comes to full rest; pause; restart.

This year’s solstitial preparation for the New is a good time for pausing. For all of us:

To contemplate how much we shall change in the coming year — because the Human Race is changing fast and we have changed radically in the past year –

To give thanks for the road that brought us here to this point in space and time and for this moment — before plunging into the maelstrom once more –

To bless all those immediately around us NOW — as well as our loved ones far afield — “absent friends” — and family gone to fresher fields –

A time to remember and a time to look forward –

[Refrain of Auld Lang Syne here optional]

New Beginnings
ღ♥ღ *♥- ҈ -*※ HAPPY DAKINI DAY ღ♥ღ *♥- ҈ -*※
Yesterday (December 30) was also, by good fortune, a pan-Buddhist Dakini Day: the eleventh moon of the eleventh month of the lunar calendar of Metal Tiger Year.

Time to wish the Buddhist prayer to all –

Having reached the ultimate wisdom of the spontaneously accomplished four visions, may we be enlightened in the primordially-pure Youthful Vase Body.

OM MANI PADME HUM

May we dedicate all positive words to the enlightenment of all sentient beings in Six Realms of Cyclic Existence

To attain pure awareness which is displayed in the Skull of the Absolute Expanse, may we invoke the variegated desirable qualities of rainbow rays and may the Orbs of the Six Lights shine.

Return of the Dinosaurs -- or was that Minneapolis?

On December 21st, the Sun entered the third earth sign of the zodiac — Capricorn — at 3:40PM PST 10 days ago: ‘beginning’ winter in the Northern Hemisphere, according to old tradition. Recent earth changes and climatic trends, however, have made winter begin a lot earlier annually for most of us.

Astral Weather Vane, a division of the excellent Humanity Healing voluntary organization, gives this prognostication for solstice 2010 and oncoming year of 2011:

The festivities begin with a Full Moon (activating 30 degrees of Sagittarius and Gemini at 12:15AM PST 21 December).
Adding more significance and potential turbulence to this start of a season is Mercury in Sagittarius square to Jupiter in Pisces (5:00PM PST).

Astral Weather Vane says:
If this sounds familiar, the reason is Mercury and Jupiter already made this square pattern in the heavens on November 25 and they will do so again on January 11, 2011 [close to the time of another lunar eclipse Ed.] This is all due to Mercury’s current retrograde cycle from December 12th to 29th.

Mercury 90-degrees to Jupiter can equate with tensions in communications and disruptions to travel schedules.*

For the solstitial and New Year period, Humanity Healing recommends sending out healing thoughts and prayers to people in need, humanity and the kingdoms of nature. “Uplifting and enlightening our entire home planet is a keynote of every solar-lunar, monthly high-cycle. Individual and group meditations are advised.”

World weather Hogmanay 2010/2011, courtesy weather.org

*I empathize with this announcement, as I was personally involved when Northern Europe was in the grip of an ice storm December 9th (when I attempted to escape the wintry blasts only to be thwarted and held captive in an Amersterdam airport hotel overnight — in order to APPRECIATE the full weight of snow I was escaping). The freeze lasted until well after the solstitial eclipse.

In the coldest December for a century (since records began in 1890) Great Britain made a series of unprecedented individual payments of GBP25 per week to residents for the whole month of December. The ‘cold-weather payment’ was paid by the British Government to needy elderly frozen residents — over five million of them — for four weeks of December 2010 ‘when the temperature averaged 32ºF or below for six successive days and nights’.

Britain remained in the Big Freeze until only a brief brush with the Atlantic Gulf Stream’s northwesterly drift (December 28-29) through Cornwall, Wales and western Scotland allowed the coastline to hold the shores (and airports) open over Hogmanay.

Hogmanay
This last night of the Old Year — in case the strange tradition of the emergence of male Scot inadequately clad in freezing temperatures is an unfamiliar one — is traditional but freezing time for Scots to emerge from hovels/caves/pubs/boozers to booze some more in the freezing streets while singing a jolly Hogmanay blast of song. Once again re-entering the cave/pub/drinking establishment for the rest of the wee hours until January 1st is well and truly ‘welcomed in’.

While a temporary temperature reprieve has set in for a few days — Edinburgh streets are still paved with snow — the storm moved (again uncharacteristically) west. The northerly airflow hit the northern Atlantic waters and Northeastern Seaboard of the USA was next to receive the Nordic blast – storms and temperatures plummetting in high jet stream shivers across the Atlantic and freezing in the northerly states of Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where only a dusting is usual.

Of course Minneapolis/St Paul is having its usual subzero delight of Northern Winter. We’ll temporarily ignore Minneapolis/St Paul. The Pacific NW continues balmy.

Asterisk Saga explanation

Capt. Robert Falcon Scott's ship the 'Terra Nova" waiting for his return from the South Pole January 12, 1911. He never returned.

*I, for one, am more than grateful to be where I am at this very moment. Not only have I braved, Capt Scott-like, Antarctic-clone snowdrifts on my Grampian hillslope in early December; sledge-and-suitcase strapped to manoeuver a farmtrack totally infilled with nine-foot swathes of swirling white: to reach a (patient, angelic) waiting taxi at the farm one mile below in the black whitescape at 4a.m. –
– only to be turned back at the airport — by officious and insensitive airline officials who seemed unaware that Aberdeen was the only airport operational in Scotland at the time — and I was three minutes late for the gate –

– to be re-routed (at great expense) to Minneapolis/St Paul — which was the very last place on the planet I wished to go to — only to be carefully mismanaged by the same officious staff, I take it, to arrive too late in Amsterdam to make a Mineapolis/St Paul connection. Thank you, Snow Angels.

To be cossetted and carefully and gently and kindly assisted by KLM staff (endless compliments here) and rerouted to my correct destination, San Francisco, one day late, but hotel, sustenance and accommodation/internet efficiently and freely given, while making very little drama out of a crisis.

And not — at that time — being aware that Schiphol Amsterdam was the ONLY OTHER airport open in Europe.

Two days and several continents later, I arrive to relative balmy winter of rainy northern California and am grateful to leave Europe and its frozen Angst behind.

Thank you Jupiter square Mercury.

Runup to solstice.

Silence.

Run up to New Year and the January 4th partial lunar eclipse which will serve as a signal that some of the Angst may be over… but don’t hold your breath.

wild snow wolves... or just wild snow...

At solstice the Earth goes through one of its two sacred time shifts in its annual orbit when the Sun appears to stand still on the Celestial Equator.

Time for hibernation: or meditation: or both. To prepare for what’s to come:

The leap into 2011: all the ONES: 01:01:11.

This year of 2011 may be the year we as a species make that quantum leap. Are you ready? I think we’re in for a wild ride.

Hathor Blessing: Crop Circle finale & farewell

Salutation to Hathor, goddess of love, music and beauty and Lady of the Stars, whose ritual Menat necklace represents the Souls of the blessed ones

Last week on Friday the thirteenth what may be seen as the swan song of the 2010 Crop Circle season appeared: an Egyptian-style ritual collar with trailing neckgear shining from a Wiltshire field of golden corn. It is the height of the harvest, days before they start wholesale cutting of wheat and barley in the western countryside.

The formation’s simple lines and clear message to crop circle followers may be overlooked among a plethora of dimensional designs which have dominated the 2010 crop circle season.

Linking its unadorned but glorious glittering shape to a Menat necklace — the symbol of primeval mother goddess Hathor in both the Old and New Kingdoms of ancient Egypt — is not difficult. A ritual curving jewelled shoal of splendour, its form is emblazoned in our collective memory, even as a northern species, derived from classical and prehistoric civilization of Europe and the Mideast.

She is the world’s most ancient goddess, embodiment of the planet Earth herself. It is she who cradles the sun each night as he sinks in the west.

Even the current fashion in heavy female neckware harks back to that classical curve: row upon row of minute turquoise beadwork and beauty created to invoke delight in a child, desire and pleasure in a model on the catwalk.

In present-day Wiltshire, we may not admit to being familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphics, hieratic script or deathmasks and tomb-paintings of the earliest dynasties (Great Pyramid of Khufu, 2589 – 2566 BC). But we have dormant memory banks, our bodies contain suppressed genetic code which probably remembers such a time, can ‘feel’ the weight of such a beautiful collar round our necks, desire the touch of such a ritual necklace.

It belonged to the Earth’s primeval goddess, Hathor: bringer of love, abundance, joy, fertility and regeneration.

As a swan song for the Wiltshire crop circle season of 2010, it seems a fitting statement to place at the height of English summer, when crops of wheat, barley, maize and even oats glorify in eight-hour days of beating sunrays pounding health and vitality into their stems and cells, literally seconds on the cosmic clock before the combine harvesters slice through life, growth and celestial graffiti.

Judging by a pronounced extra-terrestrial bent to this season‘s creations — despite a fairly good supporting cast of ‘plankers’ (man-made designs) — and with Science now firmly convinced of genuine CC enhancement in grain nutrient value and crop size by ET’s ‘light treatment’, I fervently hope someone is buying up Wiltshire wheat to bake into ‘DNA-enhanced’ bread, or wonder-pasta for our general wellbeing!

While there have been many man-made attempts this summer to emulate the light-bent nodes of superluminary crop circles, the Beckhampton message from the goddess appears to be genuine.

But, back to symbolism. Why Hathor? Why choose to imprint English fields — and thereby all of croppiedom — with a blessing from an ancient goddess who ruled heaven and earth before most of the western world could write?

Hathor, Earth-Mother Cow-Goddess bestowed bounty

Some time in Egypt’s pre-dynastic past the Goddess Hathor came into being, considered a major force in the creation of the world. Hathor was worshipped for over 3,000 years. Alternate forms of her name are Hwt-Hrw, Het-Hor, Het-Hert, Athor or Athyr.

Hathor, frequently seen as Egyptian Cow Goddess whose horns ‘held the Sun’, is probably Earth’s most ancient female deity. She encompassed so many different qualities and roles that it’s near impossible to list them all. She has been known as Sky Goddess, Sun Goddess, Moon Goddess and Goddess of the West. She was known as goddess of Moisture, and of Fertility, Agriculture and Motherhood; Goddess of the Underworld, Mistress of the Necropolis and, in her role as Protectress of the City of the Dead at Thebes, she became Goddess of the Dead.

Amenhotep III's ritual Menat necklace of bronze, faience, stone, glass and turquoise was gifted by goddess Hathor to pharaoh to engender his rebirth; courtesy Metropolitan Museum of New York

She was worshipped as Goddess of Love, Ecstasy and Beauty, and enriched the lives of her followers as Goddess of Music, Dance, Drinking and Joy. She was patroness of Women and Marriage and Protectress of Pregnancy. Hathor ultimately became special guardian spirit for all women and all female animals, and had such titles as ‘Lady of the Turquoise’ and ‘Lady of the Sycamore.’

The Menat Necklace was a ritual object first seen adorning the neck of the goddess and later used in ritual ceremonies to Hathor. The bejeweled necklace had many strands which ended in a counterpiece that, when originally worn as a collar, would hang down the back of the neck. In later use it had a ceremonial purpose and was wafted and waved as an amulet over the devoted to convey a blessing from the Goddess. The Menat symbolized fertility, and some sources see its offering a mystical union between the Goddess and her followers.

Are we earthlings now ‘followers’ of the wise goddess? Do we rate a heavenly blessing from the most high?

All summer long we’ve been expecting a message from God. Finally, as the year turns to autumn, we get a blessing from Goddess.

Much like the goddess Ishtar, Hathor’s attributes were a complex combination of the sacred feminine, death and the afterlife. It was she who bore bodies of the dead to the Underworld, she who actually took ownership of them. In this role Hathor became Queen of the Underworld.

Sun blessing embedded in a Wiltshire crop circle: Hathor regalia ends the 2010 season

In her association with Sun God Ra, Hathor was granted the title ‘Golden One’, while also sharing the name, ‘Eye of Ra’ with goddesses Sekhmet and Bast. Hathor was Protectress of Horus, the falcon god, and called a wide variety of names in that role. Some attributes appear conflicting and confusing and, as Mother Goddess, Hathor was often confused with both Isis and Nut. What confuses even more is the fact that she subsequently ‘became’ Isis who, in a later period, absorbed and acquired many of the aspects previously attributed to Hathor.

When she governed in her principal place of worship at Dendera, Hathor’s role as Goddess of Fertility, Women and Childbirth was venerated specifically. Her temple there was filled with incense, intoxication and pleasure. At her other temple in Thebes, however, Hathor changed into her robes as Goddess of the Dead, known as ‘Lady of the West.’ In Thebes she cradled in her arms the sun god Ra, as he descended below the horizon in the west.

Goddess Hathor wearing the Menat, holding her sacred Sistrum (rattle)

Hathor has represented the erotic in femininity and procreation, and was frequently identified with Greek goddess Aphrodite, Roman Venus. In her role as Goddess of Fertility, Hathor represented Nature’s creativity, and as Goddess of Moisture, she was associated with the annual inundation of the river Nile. In this aspect, Hathor was linked to dog-shaped constellation Sothis (Sirius, ‘dog-star’) which, at its heliacal rising on the eastern horizon — immediately before the Sun — announced yearly flooding of the Nile in July.

Eventually, in a later period, when Hathor’s role began to change, Isis/Osiris (Serapis) cults gained popularity in Egypt and then spread through the Roman empire and Greece. Because of her fertile and life-bringing nature, Hathor was considered capable of reviving the dead; she welcomed them to the Underworld, dispensed water to them from the branches of a sycamore tree, and offered them food. In various New Kingdom tombs at Thebes Hathor is depicted embracing the dead.

In pre-dynastic times, and certainly in the early dynasties, Hathor is seen as the cow-consort of the Bull of Amenti, the original deity of the Necropolis. As queen or ‘Lady of the West’, her mortuary title as Protectress of the Necropolis valley on the west bank of the Nile, in her role as protector she not only oversaw where the sun (Ra) went down, but this choice location for later kingdoms’ burial tombs.

Amazingly Hathor, one of the world’s greatest goddesses, was worshipped for a longer period than Christianity or Islam have reigned. Hathor’s religion of joy and celebration dominated for over 3,000 years. It continued strong throughout Egypt, and through both Greek and Roman empires, where it spread and became assimilated.

Her cult was in its heyday when the first great pyramids were built and used as sacred pharaonic tombs, and lasted until pyramids were no longer used for that purpose, by which time royal patrons continued under her protection on the west bank of the Nile in the great Necropolis Valley of the Kings.

She is the equivalent in Nordic, Celtic and Anglian territories of the Old Goddess of the pagans. She perpetuated in popular speech, in rituals of hearth and earth, in festival custom with its cargo of symbol and myth. She was seen as the source of life, power and wisdom. People prayed to her for wellbeing, abundance, protection, and healing. They invoked her during birth, and the dead returned to her and moved in her retinue.

They say that the Old Goddess, Crone who rode the winds, caused rain and snow and hail on earth, and that she revealed omens of weather and death and other momentous things to come.

In this sense she and Hathor are one and the same: primeval Eve, Brittonic Bride, Norse Auohumla, the great cow-giant goddess, true ancestor of the Norse gods. She is also Gaia, Sumerian Antu (who later ‘became’ Ishtar, goddess of love and procreation).

Apex of inspirational 'Hathor crop circle' at Northdowns, Beckhampton, Wiltshire, photo courtesy Bert Janssen

It is significant, too, that the ‘Hathor crop circle’ at Beckhampton appeared on a Friday the 13th.

The superstition held today of Friday the 13th being unlucky may stem from the betrayal of the Knights Templar on Friday, October 13th 1307 (Old calendar) when their monastic military order in France was arrested en masse by King Philip. The Spanish, however, hold Tuesday as their unlucky day; so the suggestion is a tentative one. Perhaps ET used the date merely to get our attention. It’s a familiar technique he’s employed over the years to combine crop images and Calendar.

An alternate explanation occurs: in later European tradition Friday was observed as ‘holy day of the goddess’, beginning with its eve on Thursday night. In that sense she is Norse goddess Freyja. The dark of the year was sacred to Old Goddess. On winter solstice nights, she was said to fly over the land with her spirit hosts. Tradition added that shamanic witches rode in her wake on the great pagan festivals, along with the ancestral dead.

Reverting to the Hathor connection, one ancient tale is retold of a group of goddesses, bearing cow horns and playing tambourines who went by the name the Seven Hathors. These Hathors were able to foretell a child’s destiny; similar in many ways to the weaving of the Tapestry of Life by the Fates, the Norns or the Disir. The Hathors were more than clairvoyants who could see into the future. They were questioners of the soul as it made its way to the Land of the West. In addition to knowing a child’s destiny, the Seven Hathors could foretell the exact hour of his death.

Egyptian mythology held that a person’s destiny was decided by the hour of his death and therefore his fortune, or lack of it, stayed with him throughout his life. The Hathors were known to have extreme powers, and were able to replace a prince, born with a bad fortune, with a child born with a good one. In this way they had the ability to protect both the Dynasty and the nation. The Seven Hathors are presently receiving some attention through the works of musician and psychic channeler, Tom Kenyon. When Hathor’s ‘old’ attributes became overshadowed by those of Isis and new kingdom beliefs, the Hathors were sent into the sky. There they have become identified with the Pleiades.

In more northern latitudes, reverence was paid for centuries to the Old Goddess in planting and harvesting, baking, spinning and weaving. The fateful Spinner was worshipped as Holle or Perchta by the Germans, as Mari by the Basques, and as Laima by Lithuanians and Latvians. She appears as Befana in northern Italy and as a myriad faery goddesses in France, Spain, and Celtic countries (Brittonic Bride). In Serbia she is Srecha; in Russia Mokosh, Kostroma or the apocryphal Saint Paraska.

Corn dollies embody ancient goddess Mother Earth

The Old Goddess was commonly pictured as a crone or aged woman, and origins of her veneration are lost in the mists of time. While goddesses of ancient ethnic cultures have unique qualities, they share traits, a deep international genetic root. Old Goddess is like the weathered Earth, ancestor of all, a tangible presence in forests, grottos and fountains. In her infinite guises she manifests countless forms: as females of various ages, she shapeshifts to tree, serpent, frog, bird, deer, mare and other creatures. Surviving the European Reformation, she remained beloved by the common people.

When farmers, and those who worked the land, were less dependent on technology to produce our food, Mother Earth and nature played a much more important role in the annual cycle of life. In particular, the harvest of cereal crops was a major event in the calendar.

We are now three weeks into ancient Lammas, the traditional harvest season.

In pre-industrial times a summertime ‘Lord of the Harvest’ would be given the responsibility of planning the harvest and marshalling the workforce, and when harvest was finally done they would celebrate with a ‘Harvest Home’ feast.

Corn Dolly made from the last (Clyack) cut sheaf, held sacred through winter, a blessing of Earth's bounty

The first and last sheaves of corn to be cut had major significance. Grain from the first sheaf (the ‘Maiden’) was made into a sacred loaf of bread while the last sheaf – the Clyack – was reserved for transformation into a corn dolly: symbolic of Mother Earth and the Spirit of the Corn.

Straw from this last sheaf was woven or plaited into the complex shapes of corn dollies, as cornucopiae, horns of plenty, horse shoes, knots, fans and lanterns. Ultimately, shape depended on local tradition, but in every case a symbolic ‘dolly’ graced the top table at the end-of-harvest feast and was then carefully guarded over the winter months. When spring crops were sown, the dolly re-emerged to be carried round the fields to pray that Nature and corn goddess delivered up another good crop.

In Wiltshire they’ve already started the harvest. Even in my native Aberdeenshire winter barley is going under the combine. Three weeks into Lammas (which pivots round August 1st), harvest is in full swing.

Our consciousness these days has become less aware of such natural cycles of food-cultivating-and-cutting; we are lulled into ignorance of the provenance of our daily bread. Perhaps it is this lulling that the crop circle presence wants to jerk us out of: to rekindle in us an appreciation — even reverence — for Earth’s bounty and her unconditional gifts of life and nourishment. More significant may be the appearance of a ritual symbol in the crop to help us understand our civilization’s most ancient ancestral traditions which show respect for (Earth’s) sacred creator gods.

Hathor was probably civilization’s earliest goddess. Her blessing showered on us now from above, five thousand years after the zenith of her devoted following, emblazoned in golden grain for our delectation and visual appreciation (aerial photographs superbly provided by Frank Laumen and Bert Janssen, thank you guys); it sparks our earliest memories of civilization. Are we being given a futuristic jab in the arm, to trigger our DNA? or to learn to appreciate more fully what our ancestors understood?

Our senses are being stroked, honed, we are receiving her gifts again. Not only was she goddess of birth and death, she was goddess of REBIRTH.

It’s just possible she has returned in essence now to show us that — at the end of the 2010 season of remarkable cosmic signs — our species is poised on the brink of rebirth: that we humankind are jointly headed for regeneration.

Dare we hope? As we come together as a race, as we feel joy in our rebirth, may we also see a faint promise of Hathor’s greatest gift? Immortality?

Fire Festivals & Persistence of Pasche

Carnival in Rio before Lent

‘First come Candlemas
Syne the New Meen
The niest Tiseday efter that
Is Festern’s E’en.
That Meen oot
An’ anither at its hicht
The niest Sunday efter that
Is aye Pasche richt.’
Ancient Scots Easter calculation. Anon.

The Calendar according to the Moon was regular as clockwork. It was reliable, you could see it in the sky and you could set your life rhythms by it. The old Scots rhyme above spoken slowly will make sense even to the least son of the soil of Ultima Thule. But non-Scots may need a little help in translation.

Festern’s E’en – as Hallowe’en – was an ancient calendar fire festival celebrated, like all pre-Christian revelry, at night. And, like Hallowe’en, it still is. Only we call it by another name: Carnival.

Translated simply, it is the evening before the ‘Feast/Festival’. With a capital F, this celebration was one of the greatest fire festivals in the Celtic Year. When it became absorbed into the Christian calendar, its importance and significance to the populace was so great, that it was deemed necessary to give it a place of prominence second only to Christmas. As such it has remained. The festival that precedes Easter is throughout the world celebrated with fire and puppetry,processional and masqued balls, dance and music and food and drink.

If you ask a South American about Carnival, ‘Carnaval’ in Portuguese, he will tell you they prepare for it all year round. In some cultures it has become almost more important than Christmas – a reversion to type, backtracking to pre-Christian times.

In Brazil, it makes complete sense to hold Carnaval precisely on its February moon date in the ancient calendar because in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires it is full-blown summer. By contrast, German Fasching, held similarly in February, is pretty chilly dancing in the noctural streets of northern Hamburg!

Terence Young's 'Thunderball' James Bond in 1965

Carnival used to be held in the Bahamas in February too, when spring is at its height and the casuarinas blow carefree along Nassau Beach. But in the summer of 1965, Chubby Broccoli and Sean Connery made a James Bond film set on Paradise Island and commissioned the Carnival Committee to stage an ‘extra’ Carnival, so they could weave festive fiery scenes into ‘Thunderball’; since then Bahamian Carnival has been a summertime festival.

London's Notting Hill Carnival

Similarly, the London Carnival of Notting Hill, begun in 1964, is held on the last weekend in August. No connection to Lent or Easter any more.

But originally, before the Gregorian calendar took over calculation and reckoning by the moon in 1582, Carnival was high festive season in that ancient stream of festivities used by Man to celebrate the return of the Light to a dark winter world.

Candlemas, as I’ve mentioned before, is the first glimpse of light waxing and adding grace to the darkest days of winter. On February 2nd – or Bride’s Day, before solar months took over as calendrical norm – the measure of light from the heavens increases to such a degree that birds begin to mate, petals on spring flowers open and the Earth softens its frozen grip.

In lunar terms, the first New Moon of the second month (Gregorian) was celebrated in every northern hemisphere culture planet-wide from prehistoric times. From Buddhist to Inuit culture the return of light to nurture the earth’s crucial growing plants was a calendar custom worth celebrating.

When Christian calendar calculators were devising Roman Church high and holy days, they took care to incorporate these ancient fire rites as an integral part of Christian culture and ‘lore’. it did not do to lose a single ‘soul’ in the transition from a pre-Christian to a Christian world.

And, as it was a long-standing tradition for local people to mark ancient quarter days – the solstices and the equinoxes – with festivals of fire, it seemed right that they should transit unaltered into the Christian calendar: marked instead with candlelight inside church buildings.

Christmas was chosen at the time of (northern) winter solstice when the ‘ignorant’ (pagan) desperately needed to celebrate the return of ‘light to the world’. Christ was called the ‘Light of the World’. The Son of the Sun.

Midsummer was fully taken up with a light celebration of its own – in northern latitudes the longest days of the year brought bountiful harvest and genuine thanksgiving by a rural population for the gifts of the earth continuously provided from midsummer through to Lammas, an August ‘cross-quarter’ day. No Church overlay was necessary; nevertheless Roman Catholicism superimposed the feast of John the Baptist on midsummer’s day and frowned heavily on pagan corn dollies and such Celtic fripperies perpetuated by an agricultural society.

The Equinoxes, however, required more serious contemplation.

Most rural (so-called ignorant) converts were aware of the movement of both sun and moon. While that may appear to us today to be rather sophisticated intellectual knowledge, it was commonplace then to note changing seasons, hours of light and dark and the phases of the moon. When equinox arrived it was – in the human mind at least – a miracle that every place on earth had exactly the same number of hours of light and dark for one earth period of 24 hours. The sun rose at 6 and set at 6 on every man, woman, child and beast on earth. The phenomenon was in itself worth celebrating. In astronomical terms, the event occurs precisely at the moment the Sun (traveling along the ecliptic) appears to cross the celestial equator, and while ancient Man may not have known that added sophistication, his life was changed by its occurrence twice in every year. In addition, he celebrated the spring (cross-quarter) festivals of Wesak, Beltane, May Day, along with any events providing an excuse for Morris and maypole dancing, The Church allowed these to continue, so long as the requisite saints were also remembered and offerings given.

While Archangel Michael was given dominion over autumnal equinox, Easter was chosen as a fitting ‘high’ celebration to take over the vernal equinoctial light-and-dark balance.

What put a spanner in the works was that – late in the seventh century – when two contemporary Christian systems were running alongside in mutual cooperation, the internal systems within the Celtic and Roman Churches came to a clash; an impasse.

Venerable Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People'

Hugely influential, powerful and wealthy King Oswiu of Northumbria had been happy to run his Christian nation along the lines of Columba’s Celtic (thirteen-month lunar) calendar issued and maintained from Iona. This Celtic doctrine conveniently recognized the King as head of religious affairs. His Anglian Queen Eanfled, a devout Roman Christian recognized not the King but the Pope as head of the Church. They might have reconciled their differences, had it not been for a calendrical anomaly which in some years had the King ordering huge feasts for Easter at exactly the moment when his Queen was still fasting in Lent. Because another such year was due to happen in AD665, with the assistance of Wilfrid, new abbot at Rippon, and recently returned from Gaul and Rome, the King called the Synod of Whitby in AD664 and led a thorough investigation into the rites and rituals of both systems. The event is described in detail by Jarrow churchman Bede (673-735) who completed his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in 731.

While the Synod changed lives, split families and royal houses, even intra-kingdom alliances, thereafter church festivities centred on Easter were standardized throughout the land and celebrated in accordance with Roman custom.

Easter remained the highest festival of the Christian church until the Scots Reformation when (after 1660) presbyterian austerity superimposed simplicity, reduced dogma and a return to ‘speaking to God’ directly.

For the rest of the British Isles, however, and for descendants and dependents the world over, Easter remains one of the great festivals of the Christian calendar.

Curiously, for a celebration washed, ironed and folded so neatly by successive synthesized systems – prehistoric, early-historic, pre-Christian, Celtic and Roman Christian – Easter emerges as a supreme highlight in the Church year.

Its one concession to its pagan past is that is remains to this day a date fixed according to the Moon.

And, in order not to offend other faiths which, like Anglian Eanfled, might take offence at the bulldozing approach (e.g. Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials), there is a built-in mechanism of calculation which ensures that Easter and Passover never collide and that the Christian High Festival should never occur BEFORE equinox.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans, bead capital of the world

So the little rhyme above, translated, simple enough and sympathetic to Scots ears, sums up global lead-time to Pasque, Pasche, Oster/Easter, the pagan event of maiden-goddess Eostre/Ostara, the Highest Festival in the Christian Calendar: when in the High Days before the Fast of Lent, the Roman Catholic world celebrates. From Italian Carnivale to German Fasching (Fastnacht, the eve before the Fast), prelude to French Pasque, in Portuguese Carnaval and on ‘Fat Tuesday’ of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras, bead-festooned feasters and revellers make merry because tomorrow their stomachs will die.

The modern gesture to Pancake or Shrove or Fat Tuesday (Festern’s E’en) is not lost on marketers for supermarket chains who do a roaring trade in maple syrup and readymix batter. It’s the ‘stock up while the going’s good’ mentality, because the body must endure the subsequent fast of Lent for a regulation 40 days. Once more the Roman Church succeeded in condensing multiple events in Christ’s life into one festival: this fast represents the period of time He spent without food while meditating in the desert.

Nowadays, nobody questions that its immediate successor in the calendar is representational of His death and resurrection, when historically the two events happened years apart. Once again, ancient symbolism is used to gloss over detail.

‘First arrives Candlemas (Feast of Bride); Then the New Moon
The following Tuesday will be ‘Fastnacht’/Fasching or Shrove Tuesday
Allow that ‘moon’ to wax and wane
And watch till the next moon is full
The Sunday thereafter will be Easter Day.’
translation by Scots descendant, non-Anon

It worked for King Oswiu in 664. I can assure you, the calculation works still!

©2010 Marian Youngblood